Category Archives: Rant

Our population has been gaslit over the last three-quarters of a century by, well, not just Republicans but by Democrats as well. And by for-profit media. By well-meaning and deceptive clergy alike. By multinational banks and corporations who, frankly, only care about exploiting “emerging markets” for profit.

Perhaps America’s time has come. The karmic chickens come home to roost.

The United States spent most of the last 70 years destabilizing nations with elected governments that didn’t toe the line we dictated. Those governments were replaced with corrupt right-wing strongmen who routinely murdered, raped and “disappeared” any voices of dissent. The President and Congress didn’t care, as long as the money flowed to the right pockets.

And we all let it happen. You, me, our parents and grandparents, every American. Every. American.

We aided and abetted these actions by buying into the corrosive myths of “American exceptionalism” and “spreading democracy.” And by calling ourselves “the free world,” and actually believing it! Meantime, our government–composed of people we were led to “choose” by the notion of “the lesser of two evils”–shined us on.

Our government, and the people and corporations who paid for it, used the Soviet Union as the ultimate boogeyman to scare the shit out of us, and let them do whatever was needed to “stop the Commie menace.” Of course, that “menace” was basically anything that got in the way of American business.

To fight this “foe,” they paid and armed religious extremists to terrorize and hound the Soviets out of Afghanistan. In the process, creating the Taliban. And Al Qaeda. And, thanks to our meth-like addiction to fossil fuels, ISIL.

They used Christ and the church to sell the idea that Unfettered Free-Market Capitalism was not just a good thing, but that it was right before god. And that Jesus stands with us against “godless Communism.” And they counted on our ignorance and laziness to forget what the New Testament actually said and to just listen to the prevarications from the pulpit.

They dropped billions of dollars of our money on useless and dangerous weapons to scare the Soviets into an arms race which caused them to implode. Which also meant that the Soviet arsenal was now available to the highest bidder.

And so, here we are, surrounded by enemies we created and empowered. Our electoral process tampered with in much the same way as the CIA used to do it under Dulles.

This past November, half the electorate (just enough to game the Electoral College at least), goaded by inchoate, incoherent rage at “lost privilege” and “politics as usual” and the myth of a “Liberal elite” stirred up by a right-wing echo chamber, elected a creature of the for-profit media to be President. A spray-tanned, weave-wearing, short-fingered, thin-skinned fool who epitomizes a quintessentially American vulgarity and narcissism. His dad was a slumlord, his grand-dad a pimp.

He will be sworn in on Friday as the 45th President of the United States.

He is a walking Constitutional Crisis. He, or his minions, may actually be traitors according to that same Constitution.

The grifters and sociopaths that make up the Republican Congress will let this Useful Idiot Twitter his tiny fingers to a nub. Meanwhile, in the background yet in front of our faces, they will continue to destroy the few good things, the few bits of real progress, made since the end of World War II.

I never actively pursued journalism in college. I was a theater major at first, then leaned toward English as a major. I seemed to back into publishing as a consequence of being my father’s son.

With the experience I had, a couple of things were obvious from the get-go. First, THERE IS NO SUCH THING AS THE LIBERAL MEDIA. Anyone who’s spent more than a minute in a journalistic setting will be disabused of that notion immediately. Thus, anyone who subscribes to this myth is either being actively dishonest with themselves or with you, or is an idiot.

Or both. Fox News exists as a way of creating and maintaining a dull and credulous audience of mental deficients who are played Pavlov style with tropes that should have died with Reagan’s brain.

Also, and somewhat related: the phenomenon of “unbiased reporting” is not the default setting of journalism. It is what gets taught in school–the five Ws are as basic as the reverse pyramid of crafting a story. But it’s *what sells papers*, or *what gets eyeballs on your page* that is the true default setting.

In the American hegemony, “news” is a business–mainly because we know of no other way to operate. Consider how PBS finds constant difficulty getting and keeping funding for its often stellar reporting.

Raw data is culled and shaped first by the story’s author, no matter how objective that author thinks he or she is. Then, it’s passed by an editor who further refines (or dilutes, depending on whether it’s your words) the product into something that gets shoehorned between ads, the space for which is what pays the bills. And if something about that story will piss off (or merely annoy) one of those paying customers, the story is further “refined” or deleted all together.

Some kind of dystopic stuff is afoot from Tom Wheeler and the FCC. I mean hilariously awful. A lot of people are writing Tom.Wheeler@fcc.gov and openinternet@fcc.gov to let their feelings be known. I figured I’d tap something together and hopefully make a new buddy while I’m at it! Neat huh?

Mr. Wheeler:

You must be an intelligent, thoughtful man. You were certainly smart enough to leverage your relationship with companies like Comcast and Verizon into getting the Chairman’s seat at the Federal Communications Commission. Bravo sir. I too aspired to civil service. Good gigs, usually.

Now the agency for which you work is chartered to “regulate…interstate and international communications by radio, television, wire, satellite and cable in all 50 states, the District of Columbia and U.S. territories.” says so on fcc.gov. That’s your mandate.

Your proposition for “net neutrality” does not follow that mandate. Not even a little.

It will allow a cadre of massive companies–like Comcast and Verizon–to do the regulating for you by essentially selling their services–high-speed internet access–to the highest bidder. Only those that will be able to pay their outrageous levies will be able to get their content to end-users.

And this will be the most beige dreck there is. The most inoffensive, mediocre pap that companies like Disney and Fox can shovel out there in the name of capitalism.

But wait! There’s more!

Because we at the other end of the wire are also paying outrageous levies to use these services, you are allowing these massive companies to essentially “double-dip” for the same lousy service.

So we’re paying, they’re paying too. My, but they must all *love* you now, your former clients. You’re going to make them obscenely rich–richer than they already are, which is perhaps the greatest obscenity of all.

That might actually be your goal here. It sure looks like it.

And by the way, *none* of these companies are investing in infrastructure improvements, or in increasing broadband speed and reliability. Not at all. There are actual third-world countries with faster throughput than we have in the United States, and are getting it for less money.

Tom, that’s just embarrassing. I can call you Tom, right? You’ve read this far after all, we’re almost buddies now!

Anyway, these companies are essentially a cartel, cornering a market and using their money and influence–influence you helped them get–to stifle innovation. If a town wants to set up a public broadband utility, for example, these companies buy the votes and the lawyers necessary to squelch that so they can continue to offer their crappy overpriced service.

You’d know that of course, That was your old gig. Helping your pals at Comcast and Verizon (and AT&T,etc.) keep making their money while offering nothing in return but their monopoly.

If your intention was to con your way into this public office for the purpose of making companies like Verizon and Comcast disgustingly rich at the expense of the American people, then you’re doing a fabulous job by the way. Kudos.

I’m not saying it *was* your intention, but it sure *looks* that way from here Tom.

Real Net Neutrality means that these companies get regulated like electric and gas and water utilities–actual public utilities working in the actual public interest. Because only in that way can “an appropriate competitive framework for the unfolding of the communications revolution” (from your site again!) actually exist.

Here’s the thing Tom. You know you’ve stepped in some poo, right? This is just uncool. But you can do the right thing here. You can actually defend Net Neutrality and let real innovation and real competition happen.

Because if you let your old pals have their way Tom, then you are *not* actually working in the public interest. You will be working *against* the wishes and needs of your real bosses, the American people, in favor of money-grubbing corporations who are anti-freedom, anti-creativity, anti-competition and, thus, anti-American.

You will have violated your agency’s charter. You will be removed from your job sir. We will petition, and protest, and do all that is necessary to have you removed from that comfy chair.

But you, me, we’re all cool people right? It doesn’t have to get ugly does it?

You’ve got the opportunity to be kind of a hero here. You have the opportunity to let the future actually happen. Support real, actual Net Neutrality. Be brave.

Okay. what am I getting at here? Besides the fact that this keyboard is not conducive to typing.

I, John Grow, born in 1968 and currently returning to type this sentence after admiring the ass of a passing woman in a pair of lovely boots, do not believe in the god of the Abrahamic religions. This to me is a “no-brainer.”

The god of the bible (whatever that entity is–even the books that make up the bible are inconsistent on that score) is a work of fiction. Whether it was earnestly generated from the worldview of the writers of the various books or whether it was cynically constructed by those same men for population control and tribal identity, it is a work of fiction.

You, whomever you are, if you are “a believer,” you hold in your head a certain construct that you call “god.” Or “Jesus.” Or “Allah.” Or even “Buddha,” if you really didn’t pay attention to what buddhism is about.

This mental construct is what you refer to when you speak of god or Jesus or the others. I don’t know if I need to spell this out further to you, but if you really were paying attention to what and how you learned, it should have been plain that your version of Jesus, let’s say, and someone else’s, are as different as the minds that hold them. Even if you both had the same classes in school, your conclusions are affected by your history and environment to that point, and the perceptions which have evolved from that.

tl;dr: Your Jesus is *your* Jesus, not someone else’s. You merely agree for the sake of argument you’re talking about the same thing.

There is a term called “consensual reality” that I first read in my Zen days. Basically, reality is what we agree it is among ourselves overtly or tacitly, hence “consensual.”

So when you all talk about your god or your Jesus or your allah, you need to consider whether you speak of your own concept or the one you tacitly agreed to by joining whatever fan club you belong to.

This is one of the things that go into what I mean when I call myself “atheist.” In my worldview, this also means I don’t believe in a heaven or a hell or a soul, though I have experienced both heaven and hell in my own life. I also use all three terms–”heaven,” “hell,” and “soul,” as shorthand for bigger, harder-to-wield concepts.

I used to do the same thing with “god.” The concept I proxy with that word is closer to Einstein’s or Spinoza’s concepts than to the Abrahamic one.

In the end, they are still mental constructs. Everything is, and nothing is (hello Meher Baba).

We exist in a matrix of constructs of our own creation. Somebody else made the Valentines Day cards in the rack in front of me, as well as the wire rack itself, the paper and the ink, the paint, the steel in the wire. But the concepts behind them are just things some group of somebodys came up with at various points in linear time.

The wan loneliness I feel at not having a sweetie to give one of those cards to is also a construct. One of ego and longing and the soupy mess those have made in my life since at least puberty.

Truth is as slippery and illusory as any other mental construct. I’d go so far as to state that truth-seeking is nothing more than a search for validation of the concepts one already holds.

This is especially true if you’re not honest about the most central and basic illusion of them all: Yourself.

So last Saturday night, one of my big storage hard drives died. It was from an accidental fall, but I lost over a terabyte of data.

I’ve been working with computers on and off since I was maybe twelve. In the last twenty years, it’s been pretty exclusive. One of the appallingly normal things that happens of course is when a hard drive goes tits-up on you.

At this point in life, I am goddamned tired of it.

I didn’t lose much. 95 percent of what was on that drive is recoverable because it’s stored someplace else–On Apple’s iTunes servers in this case. I replaced the drive with a NAS (Network Attached Storage) unit and will spend the next week or so putting the contents back together.

The reason for this is that Apple started making purchased iTunes content available online. “Stored in the cloud,” in the modern marketing vernacular. When you buy something, it downloads to your computer, and is also available from them directly.

So, when you think about it, what would be the point of storing the media files locally? Part of it is in order to have the content available in a network outage. Sure, we live in an era of robust bandwidth and fast access, but we’re a clipped fiber-optic line away from the dark ages even now.

Also, it’s because there’s part of me that still lives with the old way of computer thinking. All the content I own, I want “near” me. It’s all intangible, but I still gotta have it close. It’s really one of the minor absurdities of this current internet age.

I’ve been dabbling with the whole “life in the cloud” thinking since 2002 when I got my first wireless card for my Dell. When I went back to Macs in 2007, part of the impetus was that much of the software I wanted to use was available online, and open-source. Plus the computer was leaner and lighter than the Windows machines of the period.

Hard drives are finally superfluous, and SSDs are cheap enough to get and throw into your machine, if it didn’t already have one. Back in 2007, I figured most of my crap would be stored online by 2010. It took a little longer than that, but it’s true enough now.

The Macbook Air was a hint of that life to come. The 11-inch machine I got in late 2010 had a 64 GB SSD, 2 GBs of RAM and was in a package smaller and thinner than the last PS/2 keyboard I owned. Astoundingly small. It still gets me how thin and light that computer is.

When Google introduced Chrome OS and the Chromebook concept, the Macbook Air felt like the hardware counterpart of the impossible dream Chrome OS represented, a life lived online. No more computers with vast amounts of storage on spinning disks ready to fail. In fact, the hardware was supposed to become essentially irrelevant.

This video from Google back when the CR-48 prototype was introduced demonstrates this concept in appalling detail. Made all the more sickening when I think Google could have sent ME one of those pilot computers! I signed up and everything. Damn.

Yesterday, Google introduced its newest reference model Chromebook, called Pixel. Now to this point, all extant models of Chromebook followed the example of the CR-48: A modest amount of RAM by current standards–from 2 GB to as much as 4 GB–and a small SSD, no more than 32 GB usually. An internet appliance disguised as a laptop. Acer introduced the C7 which, intentionally or not, was the real steal among Chromebooks, in that you’d buy the hardware for $199 and upgrade the RAM and storage easily and cheaply with off-the shelf components. This was because it was essentially a low-end Windows machine retooled slightly.

Lenovo, Samsung and HP released models of Chromebook that hewed closer to the CR-48 concept than Acer, but all with the subtext that the hardware was not so important.

Enter Pixel. At first glance, it looks a bit like the CR-48 crossed with a Retina Macbook Pro. Gorgeous, well built, faster that the rest of the Chromebook brand, and with a sinus-clearing pricetag. For $1299, you get a laptop with a 12.85 inch touchscreen in a 3:2 orientation (harkening back to the days before wide-screen laptops became all the rage), backlit keyboard, aluminum body, 32 GB SSD, WiFi and an i5 processor. For $1449 you get all that, a 64 GB SSD and LTE access. You also get three years of one terabyte Google Drive space, which if bought separately of course is more expensive than this machine.

The blogosphere and commentosphere have not been kind to Pixel. Those who are unclear on the concept deride this machine as a $1200 web browser. Others actually go so far as to recommend Apple computers as better buys than this machine. Astounding when you realize comment trolls HATE Apple with a passion usually reserved for Obama. Or atheists.

The haters are stuck in an old way of thinking about their computers and their data–that your machine must be completely autonomous, able to handle e-mail, coding C++ and video editing with nary a sweat, whether you actually do any of that or not. In that paradigm, RAM and storage and running native apps are the only things to consider with computers.

This is the mindset that Chrome OS would supplant. Nothing is kept on the local machine. Nothing. Everything is online, so viruses and software bloating are not an issue.

Among those who actually get Chromebook, the pricetag on Pixel is still an issue. Chrome OS was supposed to make the hardware irrelevant. It’s hard to sustain that argument with a $1200 computer. It’s a valid point.

My take on it is, Google brought out a proof-of-concept with basic hardware–an oversized netbook really–with CR-48. It was offered for free because those who received the computer were volunteer testers, and the OS still needed tweaking. The first Acer and Samsung models were pretty much built on the same hardware profile, save for the Samsung Series 550, which was billed as the top-end model with more RAM and a faster processor than the Series 5.

The next generation diverged in various ways from the CR-48 reference. Acer’s was probably the most radical, and definitely the cheapest. Lenovo and HP both brought out machines that also diverged from the original in variously interesting ways.

The common denominator in all of them though, they’re cheap. Build quality is variable, but acceptable for the price.

Pixel is Google’s example of the high end. Most every aspect of this machine, based on the specs, is something we as adopters of the Chrome OS have wanted in a “dream Chromebook.” As I think about it, I believe most all the specs on Pixel were mentioned in Google’s Chromebook forum as things that would make the experience better.

I am using an Acer C7 myself. I got it back in November with the tacit understanding I was going to void the warranty and open the case, upgrading it as much as possible as soon as possible. This now has 16 GB of RAM and a 64 GB SSD. The upgrade took only a few minutes and required twisting five screws (four for the SSD). It also has a larger battery, answering the main painpoint for the C7, its short battery life.

As I read the specs of the new Pixel, my only concern is the RAM. In Chrome OS, the more RAM you have, the more tabs you can open and leave open in Chrome. On previous models you could have as many tabs open as you wanted. After a period of inactivity however, the OS would purge some tabs in order to open up space, so when you returned to a tab it would end up needing to reload. Also, in my experience with the Series 5, there were also instances of stuttering video which may have been RAM or CPU related (it used an Atom processor).

Well with 16 gigs of RAM, that ain’t a problem. I have 20 tabs open here, of which I access maybe half to two-thirds every day, whether here or on another device running Chrome–a real benefit of Google’s ecosphere. None have needed to reload as yet. My usage is not too different from other Chromebook users, except for the number of tabs. Apparently more than five is aberrant behavior.

Most of my data is online now, spread among several sites for various purposes. Their access is platform agnostic, as it should be. Apple’s is not, as you’d imagine. I am, for all intents and purposes, a denizen of the online world.

Which is why that hard drive dying like it did galled me so much. “Aren’t I past this? Aren’t we all past this?” I asked myself as I ordered its replacement.

At any rate, this is about a dream I had early this morning. She was simply everything a heart could ever want, and she wanted me unashamedly.

Loved me.

I was about to tell her the things I learned, and show in the process that I was ready to love her as much and as deeply as she did me. We fit like we were machined by watchmakers. Effortless, free, intertwined, one heart, one life.

And then I woke up to an empty bed, an empty heart. She was every woman who loved me, and I let down. Because I didn’t get it.

Now I do of course, and it’s too late. But I do love you all unreservedly and infinitely.

If you know the origins of the holidays at this part of the year, then this is all old news to you. If you know that I am an atheist who was once a seeker of truth before the truth found me, you know what follows too. But do you know that I love you, even if you believe in fairy tales?

Celebrating the Winter Solstice goes back thousands of years. It pre-dates Christianity and Judaism. The current Christian overlays were grafted on by the Roman church to make Christianity palatable to the various northern European tribes which existed at the time, and the holiday itself was raised into its current prominence not by Christians but by Capitalists–19th century industry and the rise of corporate culture. This was *never* a Christian holiday. It’s old news. There is nothing in the NT or any of the Christian apocrypha which puts Jesus’ birth at the end of December. If Jesus existed at all, he would probably despise the celebratory aspects of it, depending on how much of an Essene he was. In any case, the gospel attributed to Mark makes no mention of Jesus’ birth because it was unimportant. It really was.

It would be okay if Christians realized how much of their belief was co-opted or outright stolen from Mithraism, how the birth of the god-man matching the Winter Solstice is about Sun worship (not Son–though the English word has a delightful connotation), and was clearly an agrarian celebration. But you all do not.

The only reason most of you believe this tall tale of someone called Jesus is because it was what you were born into. That sort of blind acceptance is toxic. The same sort of blind acceptance that hates atheists automatically, and without reason or cause. Or feels pity toward us. Though that is rather humorous to us. Almost as humorous as you thinking that this is a Christian holiday.

I was sitting in my new apartment on a Tuesday morning, waiting for my couch to be delivered. I had no phone or cable connection (yet). After all, I’d just finished moving everything in on Saturday. My dad and I sat that afternoon resting on boxes drinking water and Coke before dropping the dying moving van off at U-Haul. We weren’t sure the fool thing would make the trip from Haverhill to Fall River, but it did.

So back to Tuesday. I stayed at my girlfriend’s place the night before. We talked about furniture shopping that day (hence the couch) and fooled around a bit. We worked in the same office so I asked her to tell our boss I would be late when she left that morning.

All I thought of that morning was how the movers and I were going to get that fucking couch through the narrow maze-like twists of the apartment building, which like many buildings in Fall River was a converted mill.

I was committed. I was fixated. I’d never bought an actual couch before.

Maybe if the feet were removable we could slide the couch down the carpeted main corridor, stand it on end and wiggle it past the worst of the twists. Then squeeze through the apartment door, sli-i-i-de it down the equally weird and narrow main hallway in the apartment, then we were home free.

While this was happening, while I obsessed over how that damned couch was getting into my apartment, American Airlines Flight 11 flew out of an impossibly clear morning sky and slammed into the north tower of the World Trade Center. The defining moment of the new century was exploding horrifically into being, and I had a couch coming.

Lacking a working TV and phone, I had no idea what was happening. I turned on Howard Stern while making the 40 minute commute into work and heard him talk about a plane crashing into the World Trade Center. No one mentioned it was a jet–let alone a 767 fresh out of Logan with a belly-full of jet fuel. So I thought it was a small plane that punched into the tower and left a hole.

That sky was so clear! Ten years later, I can still picture driving up 495 and noting the clear clear blue. I had a new-ish car, a new apartment, and another day of work ahead. The roads were empty, but that wasn’t remarkable. I was within the window of time when traffic hit a lull all the way up route 44 to 495 to 95 to route 1.

I got to work and everyone was piled in the conference room around the TV. Nothing but smoke all over the Manhattan skyline. By the time I’d gotten there it was all over. Well thank goodness for instant replay huh?

A Boeing 767 is a rather large plane. Each of the twin towers dwarfed the planes which destroyed them. The damage was sufficient to eventually bring both towers down. Now I know over the years there’s been a lot made of possible conspiracies regarding the events of September 11, 2001. The Twin Towers were a unique design, and a perfect storm of circumstances owing to the amount of fuel on-board, the height at which they hit and that unique design caused them to drop as they did when they did. The Pentagon is all reinforced concrete. Like Pearl Harbor, like JFK, there are enough holes both real and perceived to hang a conspiracy tale however tenuous.

I do not believe any of it. Nevertheless, the real impact of September 11th is that America is not the safe hermetically sealed place we thought it was the day before. My dad hit the nail on the head that day when he said that this was payback for all the bullshit we’ve been involved with since the end of World War II. Including our support of Israel. I have never been a supporter of Israel myself, mainly because of the terrorist tactics of Menachem Begin and Moshe Dayan and the others who fought to create that state. I still feel that way, but I understand why they did what they did. Our support of that state, right or wrong, was one of the stated reasons for Al Qaeda’s war against us. And it was proven true by the last ten years of unremitting and unfocused aggression by our military and the CIA. That asshole man-child George W. Bush went from clown-in-chief to cowboy-in-chief and wrapped us all in god and glory at the expense of so many American kids and Iraqi innocents.

Which of course leads me, finally, to the real thing we saw that day. A bunch of religious zealots supported by a regime we prop up with our oil addiction killed themselves and three thousand innocent people for their fucking religion. That’s what motivated those fruitcakes that morning. It served as a wakeup call about what religion does, and our reaction to it also shows what religion does. Poison. All of it.

I miss that blue sky. I miss that innocent morning and that lovely little apartment I could not afford and the world I lived in the day before. This is a colder, darker place. Our innocence is gone, America is not the good country we were all taught it was, the religions we cling to are killing us as quickly as our rampant use of oil is killing our environment. We can never go back, and we may not survive. Nor may we want to survive in the world those Saudi assholes and that Texas buffoon gave us that day.

So walking around early this afternoon, I felt really depressed and lonely. Nothing new here kiddies, I think my stupid ego turns me into a hermit–who wants to be with such an opinionated weird creepy prick?

Not so many as you’d think, apparently. The girl I was seeing for a few months at the end of last year stopped taking my calls in February. Nice way to send the hint along, I guess. So ever since, it’s been non-fucking-existent in that department. Nothing makes you less desirable than rejection, ain’t it the troof. Others show little interest in little ol’ me. FUCK.

So that’s brooded through my head. And, I am an outsider at my work. Generationally, et al. Oh, and a certain crush I had there (foolish really, but I wrote poetry about her. It’s in the third book) is seeing one of my bosses. FUCKETY FUCK.

Stupid stupid shit. This is what goes mulling through my head–unless I fill it with Farscape and whatever diversions the innernets have on tap. Occasionally, you see, it backs up into a green green pile of sewage at my feet.

“Get help bwah,” you might say. “Get a prescription for some happy happy joy joys.”

On the first count, I did the therapy route. After all those years, I still think a hooker would be more useful. And cost-effective. As for the latter, I tried the happy pills too. Years back. They attenuated life. Which was fine for a time, but the sleep was awful, requiring more drugs. Those gave me bloody awful dreams. Literally bloody. No thanks.

One fringe benefit of that therapy–something laid on me in passing almost 13 years ago–was “Cognitive Therapy.” Basically, slowing down and observing how your mind works. How it snaps into certain mental frames. Tiring but useful. Although it didn’t become such until the Zen years. Ah. Thich Nhat Hanh and mindfulness. The two dovetail nicely.

So in that walking interlude, when mind rumbles through its incessant half-thought and monologue–though sometimes it’s dialogue too, only the voices are both mine and it passes the seconds okay enough (fuck you, you do it too)–I felt this tremendous sadness! UN-fucking-LOVED. Less than nothing.

(Come back to the present moment, the breath, the wind. There is nothing but that. Nothing (that) matters.)

I would detail the contents of what snapped me back into sanity, but I’ve poured it out here before, and in other places too. If you know Zen, if you know science, if you know, You’ll not only understand, but you’ll wonder why I let the stupid shit hang over me.